Thursday, June 29, 2006

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an American top notch research university has an extensive collection of free and open educational resources- MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW).

MIT OCS is large-scale, web-based electronic publishing initiative that provides "free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world". The initiative started in 2001, the course material can be used free of charge, copied and distributed anywhere in the world under a Creative Commons license (non commercial and not-for profit uses).

Unfortunately, these resources haven't been of significant benefit to many African colleges. According to MIT OpenCourseWare's Farnaz Haghseta states, "the OCW materials are largely underutilised in many African regions where Internet connectivity is limited. To overcome this limitation, MIT OCW is looking to collaborate with educational institutions that are interested in hosting a mirror site, or a local copy of the MIT OCW materials."

Haghseta says "the goal of the programme is to have 100 mirror sites installed at African educational institutions by the end of 2006." Interested institutions should contact Haghseta at farnaz@mit.edu.

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Work like you don't need the money
Love like you've never been hurt
Dance like nobody's watching
Sing like nobody's listening
Live like it's heaven on earth.
-Mark Twain
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Every morning in Africa, when a gazelle wakes up it knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed
Every morning in Africa, when a lion wakes up it knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death
It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you'd better be running!
-Anonymous
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Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-Abraham Lincoln
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If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.
-Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
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They say dreams are the windows of the soul--take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts.
-Henry Bromel
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An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.
-Thomas Jefferson
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Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
-Helen Keller
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When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge. Confucius
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You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
-George Bernard Shaw

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